• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.31 no.12
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• pp.1716-1721
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• 2021

Chikungunya fever is an arboviral disease caused by the Chikungunya virus (CHIKV). The disease has similar clinical manifestations with other acute febrile illnesses which complicates differential diagnosis in low-resource settings. We aimed to develop a rapid test for CHIKV detection based on the nucleic acid lateral flow immunoassay technology. The system consists of a primer set that recognizes the E1 region of the CHIKV genome and test strips in an enclosed cassette which are used to detect amplicons labeled with FITC/biotin. Amplification of the viral genome was done using open-source PCR, a low-cost open-source thermal cycler. Assay performance was evaluated using a panel of RNA isolated from patients' blood with confirmed CHIKV (n = 8) and dengue virus (n = 20) infection. The open-source PCR-NALFIA platform had a limit of detection of 10 RNA copies/ml. The assay had a sensitivity and specificity of 100% (95% CI: 67.56% - 100%) and 100% (95% CI: 83.89% - 100%), respectively, compared to reference standards of any positive virus culture on C6/36 cell lines and/or qRT-PCR. Further evaluation of its performance using a larger sample size may provide important data to extend its usefulness, especially its utilization in the peripheral healthcare facilities with scarce resources and outbreak situations.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.208-222
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• 2021

Managing with the presence of sea ice is the primary challenge in the operation of floating platforms in the Arctic region. It is widely accepted that offshore structures operating in Arctic conditions need station-keeping methods as well as ice management by icebreakers. Dynamic Positioning (DP) is one of the station-keeping methods that can provide mobility and flexibility in marine operations. The presence of sea ice generates complex external forces and moments acting on the vessel, which need to be counteracted by the DP system. In this paper, an icevaning control algorithm is proposed that enables Arctic offshore vessels to perform DP operations. The proposed icevaning control enables each vessel to be oriented toward the direction of the mean environmental force induced by ice drifting so as to improve the operational safety and reduce the overall thruster power consumption by having minimum external disturbances naturally. A mathematical model of an Arctic offshore vessel is summarized for the development of the new icevaning control algorithm. To determine the icevaning action of the Arctic offshore vessel without any measurements and estimation of ice conditions including ice drift, task and null space are defined in the vessel model, and the control law is formulated in the task space. A backstepping technique is utilized to handle the nonlinearity of the Arctic offshore vessel's dynamic model, and the Lyapunov stability theory is applied to guarantee the stability of the proposed icevaning control algorithm. Experiments are conducted in the ice tank of the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.152-157
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• 2022

Background: The hemi-body electron beam irradiation (HBIe^-) technique has been proposed for the treatment of mycosis fungoides. It spares healthy skin using an electron shield. However, shielding electrons is complicated owing to electron scattering effects. In this study, we developed a thimble-like head bolus shield that surrounds the patient's entire head to prevent irradiation of the head during HBIe^-. Materials and Methods: The feasibility of a thimble-like head bolus shield was evaluated using a simplified Geant4 Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. Subsequently, the head bolus was manufactured using a three-dimensional (3D) printed mold and Ecoflex 00-30 silicone. The fabricated head bolus was experimentally validated by measuring the dose to the Rando phantom using a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) detector with clinical configuration of HBIe^-. Results and Discussion: The thimble-like head bolus reduced the electron fluence by 2% compared with that without a shield in the MC simulations. In addition, an improvement in fluence degradation outside the head shield was observed. In the experimental validation using the inhouse-developed bolus shield, this head bolus reduced the electron dose to approximately 2.5% of the prescribed dose. Conclusion: A thimble-like head bolus shield for the HBIe^- technique was developed and validated in this study. This bolus effectively spares healthy skin without underdosage in the region of the target skin in HBIe^-.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.21-34
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• 2022

This study is conducted with the aim of identify the factors constituting learning competencies for engineering college students, and developing and validating the scale to measure them. To this end, literature and prior research were reviewed and focus group interview was conducted with high-achieving learners of K University in the capital region of Korea. According to previous research, 3 learning competency groups, 12 learning competencies and 41 sub-competencies were derived. Delphi survey was carried out twice, 28 sub-competencies were derived among the 41 sub-competencies through this process. 166 initial items were developed through literature review and FGI. Then, 130 items were confirmed by verifying content validity in the second Delphi survey. Based on this, pilot test were performed with 110 students in K university, and an interview was conducted with 50 students who participated in the pilot test. Reflecting the pilot test results, 1 sub-competency and 22 items were deleted. After the confirmed pilot test results, the main test were performed with all current students in K University. According to the main test result, the validity of the scale and the model fit was verified for the response data of 823 students, and the scale consisting of a total of 105 items was confirmed. The final learning competencies scale included three competency groups and 10 learning competencies. The scale developed in this study can be used as an independent scale for each competency group as needed. It is expected that this scale can be contributed to support the development their learning competencies for academic success of engineering college students, who are future learners.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.67-74
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• 2023

The images acquired from the speaker's mouth region revealed the unique patterns according to the corresponding voices. By using this principle, the several methods were proposed in which speech signals were recognized or synthesized from the images acquired at the speaker's lower face. In this study, an image-based speech synthesis method was proposed in which the depth images were cooperatively used. Since depth images yielded depth information that cannot be acquired from optical image, it can be used for the purpose of supplementing flat optical images. In this paper, the usefulness of depth images from the perspective of speech synthesis was evaluated. The validation experiment was carried out on 60 Korean isolated words, it was confirmed that the performance in terms of both subjective and objective evaluation was comparable to the optical image-based method. When the two images were used in combination, performance improvements were observed compared with when each image was used alone.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2021.06a
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• pp.137-137
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• 2021

In this study we aimed to enhance streamflow prediction skill of a land-surface hydrological model, WRF-Hydro, over one of the snow dominated catchments lies in Himalayan mountainous range, Astore. To assess the response of the Himalayan river flows to climate change is complex due to multiple contributors: precipitation, snow, and glacier melt. WRF-Hydro model with default glacier module lacks generating streamflow in summer period but recently developed WRF-Hydro-CROCUS model overcomes this issue by melting snow/ice from the glaciers. We showed that by implementing WRF-Hydro-CROCUS model over Astore the results were significantly improved in comparison to WRF-Hydro with default glacier module. To constraint the model with the observed streamflow we chose 17 sensitive parameters of WRF-Hydro, which include groundwater parameters, surface runoff parameters, channel parameters, soil parameters, vegetation parameters and snowmelt parameters. We used Dynamically Dimensioned Search (DDS) method to calibrate the daily streamflow with the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) being greater than 0.7 both in calibration (2009-2010) and validation (2011-2013) period. Based on the number of iterations per parameter, we found that the parameters related to channel and runoff process are most sensitive to streamflow. The attempts to address the responses of the streamflows to climate change are still very weak and vague especially northwest Himalayan Part of Pakistan and this study is one of a few successful applications of process-based land-surface hydrologic model over this mountainous region of UIB that can be utilized to have an in-depth understanding of hydrological responses of climate change.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.80-87
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• 2022

Purpose: Proton therapy has different relative biological effectiveness (RBE) compared with X-ray treatment, which is the standard in radiation therapy, and the fixed RBE value of 1.1 is widely used. However, RBE depends on a charged particle's linear energy transfer (LET); therefore, measuring LET is important. We have developed a LET measurement method using the inefficiency characteristic of an EBT3 film on a proton beam's Bragg peak (BP) region. Methods: A Gafchromic EBT3 film was used to measure the proton beam LET. It measured the dose at a 10-cm pristine BP proton beam in water to determine the quenching factor of the EBT3 film as a reference beam condition. Monte Carlo (MC) calculations of dose-averaged LET (LET_d) were used to determine the quenching factor and validation. The dose-averaged LETs at the 12-, 16-, and 20-cm pristine BP proton beam in water were calculated with the quenching factor. Results: Using the passive scattering proton beam nozzle of the National Cancer Center in Korea, the LET_d was measured for each beam range. The quenching factor was determined to be 26.15 with 0.3% uncertainty under the reference beam condition. The dose-averaged LETs were measured for each test beam condition. Conclusions: We developed a method for measuring the proton beam LET using an EBT3 film. This study showed that the magnitude of the quenching effect can be estimated using only one beam range, and the quenching factor determined under the reference condition can be applied to any therapeutic proton beam range.

• Clinical Pain
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-64
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• 2019

Objective: This study evaluated the feasibility of ultrasound-guided lumbar nerve root block (LNRB) and S1 nerve root block by identifying spread patterns via fluoroscopy in cadavers. Method: A total of 48 ultrasound-guided injections were performed in 4 fresh cadavers from L1 to S1 roots. The target point of LNRB was the midpoint between the lower border of the transverse process and the facet joint at each level. The target point of S1 nerve root block was the S1 foramen, which can be visualized between the median sacral crest and the posterior superior iliac spine, below the L5-S1 facet joint. The injection was performed via an in-plane approach under real-time axial view ultrasound guidance. Fluoroscopic validation was performed after the injection of 2 cc of contrast agent. Results: The needle placements were correct in all injections. Fluoroscopy confirmed an intra-foraminal contrast spreading pattern following 41 of the 48 injections (85.4%). The other 7 injections (14.6%) yielded typical neurograms, but also resulted in extra-foraminal patterns that occurred evenly in each nerve root, including S1. Conclusion: Ultrasound-guided injection may be an option for the delivery of injectate into the S1 nerve root, as well as lumbar nerve root area.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2024

This study aims to evaluate the performance of the U-Net based learning model that may vary depending on the histogram equalization algorithm. The subject of the experiment were 17 radiology students of this college, and 1,727 data sets in which the region of interest was set in the thyroid after acquiring ultrasound image data were used. The training set consisted of 1,383 images, the validation set consisted of 172 and the test data set consisted of 172. The equalization algorithm was divided into Histogram Equalization(HE) and Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization(CLAHE), and according to the clip limit, it was divided into CLAHE8-1, CLAHE8-2. CLAHE8-3. Deep Learning was learned through size control, histogram equalization, Z-score normalization, and data augmentation. As a result of the experiment, the Attention U-Net showed the highest performance from CLAHE8-2 to 0.8355, and the U-Net and BSU-Net showed the highest performance from CLAHE8-3 to 0.8303 and 0.8277. In the case of mIoU, the Attention U-Net was 0.7175 in CLAHE8-2, the U-Net was 0.7098 and the BSU-Net was 0.7060 in CLAHE8-3. This study attempted to confirm the effects of U-Net, Attention U-Net, and BSU-Net models when histogram equalization is performed on ultrasound images. The increase in Clip Limit can be expected to increase the ROI match with the prediction mask by clarifying the boundaries, which affects the improvement of the contrast of the thyroid area in deep learning model learning, and consequently affects the performance improvement.

• Anatomy and Cell Biology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.86-93
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• 2023

Age at death estimation has always been a crucial yet challenging part of identification process in forensic field. The use of human skeletons have long been explored using the principle of macro and micro-architecture change in correlation with increasing age. The clavicle is recommended as the best candidate for accurate age estimation because of its accessibility, time to maturation and minimal effect from weight. Our study applies pre-trained convolutional neural network in order to achieve the most accurate and cost effective age estimation model using clavicular bone. The total of 988 clavicles of Thai population with known age and sex were radiographed using Kodak 9000 Extra-oral Imaging System. The radiographs then went through preprocessing protocol which include region of interest selection and quality assessment. Additional samples were generated using generative adversarial network. The total clavicular images used in this study were 3,999 which were then separated into training and test set, and the test set were subsequently categorized into 7 age groups. GoogLeNet was modified at two layers and fine tuned the parameters. The highest validation accuracy was 89.02% but the test set achieved only 30% accuracy. Our results show that the use of medial clavicular radiographs has a potential in the field of age at death estimation, thus, further study is recommended.